Having a family is the dream of many people. However, few feel ready, both financially and mentally, before a certain age. At 20, hardly anyone is thinking about starting a family, much less a big one. Even people who dream of having a house full of children plan for the arrival of babies, trying to find the right times.
However, this was not the case for Ellie and Billie Dudfield, a couple from the UK who became parents of four babies at 21 and 20 years old, respectively.
The young couple already had a two-year-old baby when Ellie became pregnant again. Neither of them could have imagined that not one or two babies would be born, but that they would have identical triplets. Despite being told that it was a very ʀɪsᴋʏ pregnancy, they decided to go ahead.
Her three babies, Arthur, Archie and Albie, were born prematurely in late June of last year, with only a 40% chance of survival. Each of the babies weighed less than 1 kg and had many health problems at birth. Ellie referred to the babies’ first weeks of life as an emotional roller coaster, as her health was anything but stable.
The chances of ᴄᴏɴᴄᴇɪᴠɪɴɢ identical triplets are 1 in 200 million. Not content to defy these odds, one of the babies was born in the ᴀᴍɴɪᴏᴛɪᴄ sᴀᴄ, which occurs less than once in 80,000 births.
Fortunately, the triplets pulled through, and after three months in ɪɴᴛᴇɴsɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴀʀᴇ, they were released and went home in September. Today, the three of them live with their parents and their two-year-old sister, Lola.
Ellie and Billie are very happy to have a big family, and although they admit that it is not an easy task and their lives have completely changed, they would not change a thing about it.
“Obviously, we don’t have the typical life of people our age. It’s tough, but we’ve always been very family-oriented people, so we made it work. The nurses were impressed with our maturity when we were in the ɴᴇᴏɴᴀᴛᴀʟ ɪɴᴛᴇɴsɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ᴜɴɪᴛ,” Ellie said.